


Spooky, Missouri

by viceversa



Category: The X-Files
Genre: A Map of Us: 50 States of Sex, F/M, Halloween, Missouri - Freeform, trying to write creepy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 13:52:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16476779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceversa/pseuds/viceversa
Summary: Mulder and Scully are called to a small town in Missouri. It's cold. It's spooky. It might be haunted. However will they keep warm?





	Spooky, Missouri

It was a damp, cold, pre-winter day. The kind of cold that permeated even the warmest of layers, making knee joints ache with the chill, fingers turn numb despite gloves, the tender flesh of cheeks grate against the harsh wind. Scully was over it. She wanted to go home, even though home was cold and damp too, but at least her home had a fireplace and a comforter and, usually, Mulder, all to keep her warm. 

This place had less than nothing to keep her warm. 

They’d been called to bumfuck small-town Missouri on a kidnapping case turned, as the locals said, spooky. The case file got passed down to Mulder who interpreted ‘spooky’ as definitively paranormal and they hopped the first flight to Springfield, MO, which took two stops in both Chicago and St. Louis to get there the cheapest way. Thanks to the bureau’s miniscule allowance they got their usual coach class next to screaming kids each leg of the trip. The last plane was nothing more than a rickety puddlejumper that shook violently the whole way, leaving Scully feeling off-kilter and harassed when they landed.

An hour and a half south-southeast of Springfield, their heatless rental car rumbled into the small town of Grenlock, close to the Arkansas border. Which was the only thing it was close to. 

Grenlock was known for nothing at all, besides the usual statistics for small town Missouri. The population was largely Republican, lower class, wary, and set in their ways, just like many of the small towns Mulder and Scully had visited for years. The most notable difference to Scully was the overly-superstitious law enforcement, which is what brought them there in the first place. 

\- - -

The case. Bethany Cherton, 27, was last seen walking down the middle of her road in a quiet neighborhood just off of Main St, at 3am on a Tuesday. The walk was reported by several of her neighbors, who had woken to the sound of ‘howling’ coming from outside their homes. Her fiancée, Mark Freedman, was asleep the whole time and reported nothing unusual. Of the people awake, only two identified Cherton as the source of the noise. The others wrote it off as the wind catching in the bare branches.

“She—she was just moaning. Like shouting,” reported one neighbor, a young boy who had already been out of bed sneaking snacks in the kitchen of his home. He had woken his parents when he saw Cherton. “It was like the zombies in the movie on tv. She was walkin’ real slow.” 

Two houses down, the town comptroller, a gossipy woman in her early 50s, also reported a similar sight to the whole town, including the sheriff. 

The ‘spooky’ aspects of the case were included in the official report and, nearly a week later with no word from Cherton, the X Files unit was on the case. 

\- - -

After they dropped their bags at the local motel, Mulder directed the car down the side street where Cherton was last seen. It was a dreary day, an overcast sky making everything under it turn gray, lit oddly by the late afternoon sun. 

“She was in a white house dress,” started Mulder, using his best creep-you-out voice.  
Scully was reminded of the camping trips her family took, Bill trying to scare them and Scully pretending not to be scared. She wasn’t really, not until late at night when everyone was asleep. When she heard scraping outside. When she felt most alone and defenseless. Scully shivered in her seat.

Mulder continued. “She walked slowly, as if being dragged by the pale moonlight. Goosebumps smattered her exposed skin, her bare feet frostbitten but trudging ever forward. Her eyes were wide and blank, her hair dancing wildly in the nighttime wind, lips turning blue. Arms outstretched. Reaching. Reaching for what? Going where?”

Scully gave him her best you idiot look at his dramatics as he stopped the car. She looked up and saw he stopped in the middle of the street, but seeing no one around she didn’t protest.  
Mulder hopped out of the car and Scully followed, taking the keys he had left in the ignition with her. 

She followed Mulder a short distance in front of the car, looking around at all the simple, sturdy houses lining the street. The lawns looked too small, no curbs or sidewalks to separate them from the street, the distance between houses too large. The wind pushed an empty tire swing back and forth. The entire neighborhood was silent. It was all incongruous, and made Scully uneasy. This was the type of neighborhood where dogs ran freely with children, doors were left unlocked, cars went no faster than ten miles an hour, where the neighbors all knew one another. Now it was frozen and shut off, the town still reeling from whatever transpired a week ago.

A gentle wind carried frosty air under the collar of her coat and she flipped it up in a desperate bid for a little warmth. She could barely feel her fingers.

Scully turned to see Mulder standing just off-center of the concrete line bisecting the road, facing away from her. The line of his shoulders tilted as he raised one arm, pointing down the street. Scully followed the gesture with her eyes while walking up beside him, one foot on either side of the line. 

A small incline lead to an open field covered in a low, thick mist that had yet to dissipate. Upon closer inspection, Scully realized with a small jolt that it was a graveyard. It looked massive, going on for at least half a mile back before reaching a forest. Craggy, gnarled trees littered the field, marking points of jagged ascension across the field of the deceased. Three large oaks stood lopsided sentry at the main gate.

“She must’ve walked straight into the cemetery. I bet there’s no lighting down there at night either – she could’ve gotten lost, yes, but I think she was abducted.”

Scully broke her forward gaze to look at her partner incredulously. “Abducted?”

“Yes,” he replied. “But don’t be so quick to jump to aliens, Scully,” he winked at her. Winked!  
She glared back. The audacity of the mood shift didn’t amuse Scully in the slightest. In fact, it set her more on edge than before, now tinged with a little more rage for being here, in the cold, talking about abductions in the cemetery of a small town. She crossed her arms.

Mulder continued, unruffled or just ignorant to her mood. “Kidnapped, or maybe it was prearranged? No one reported strange lights in the sky, Scully. No one in MUFON has made any reports recently. Plus, Cherton has no history of a long, unexplained disappearance.”

Scully sighed at the explanation, briefly wondering what in her life had led her to this moment. “Prearranged? Like she planned it with someone? That’s something teenagers do, Mulder. Not women who are almost thirty years old and engaged. She was taken or left voluntarily. We should interview the family, the fiancé.”

“We can check it out tomorrow,” Mulder sighed, deflated. “I don’t think it was our kind of abduction, not this time. But something spooky is definitely at work.”

He made exaggerated eyebrows at her and she almost smacked him. Where does he get off being so casual and relaxed while she feels so tightly wound? It was the cold, it was getting to her. She hadn’t felt like this since, well. It hadn’t been long enough.

They went back to the car and drove to the station, wanting to talk with the local law enforcement before it got darker. 

\- - -

The wind had really picked up while they were inside talking with the sheriff, now whipping dead leaves the color of ash into everything in their path. The natural humidity of the Ozark Mountains turned to frozen needles in the air. 

They’d barely gotten any new information. On the case, at least. The sheriff was happy to prattle on and on about the old cemetery, and now the useless information was once again stored in Scully’s head forever. Or at least until she got her hands on a bottle of wine. 

The graveyard, before it was a graveyard, was the site of at least two different Civil War skirmishes. Soldiers from both sides were buried where they fell by the kind inhabitants of the nearby settlement that eventually became Grenlock. Five large oak trees were planted a few decades later lining the north side graveyard and marking it off from town development. Three still stand today. 

Of course, that wasn’t the full supposed history. 

“Is it haunted? Oh, Agent Mulder, of course it is! I’m just an ignorant small-town sheriff who believes anything that’s told to him, so yes, ghosts abound in the cemetery! Strange happenings! Spooky stuff!”

Scully was editorializing a little but it really was the normal speech they’d gotten in countless towns like this one. Apparently, while visiting the cemetery, visitors report ‘ghosts’ or a ‘presence’ tapping them on the shoulder repeatedly until they turn around to see nothing but air. A few women have reported their hair getting tugged on. The invisible assault continued until the visitors got frightened or just simply left. No report of escalation, nothing like kidnapping or actual harm. Or reality. Local legend had become local custom – when entering the cemetery, visitors would call out and say hello to the ‘lonely spirits’ in hopes they wouldn’t be bothered. And, surprise surprise, they usually weren’t. 

Mulder was convinced. Scully was just convinced that he was convinced because the locals were convinced, and they kept using the word “spooky” every other sentence in a vaguely southern accent. 

A frozen leaf smacked Scully in the face on the way to the car. 

\- - -

Their motel was damp and cold, just like everything else in the county, and was located on the opposite side of town from the cemetery. This didn’t prove too much of an inconvenience since it took less than five minutes to drive the distance. As much as the lure of small-town life seemed to attract Mulder, Scully was actively repelled by it. She craved the city life, the energy of the people, preferably close to the coast. This was a little too small for her liking. The people a little too one-minded, too hypercritical and superstitious. 

They dropped by the hotel for mere minutes, grabbing coats and supplies to keep warm because Mulder decided that the only available course of action was to search and then stakeout the graveyard. He was convinced they’d either find evidence or worse in the frozen cemetery, and nothing Scully said could convince him otherwise. The midwestern pre-winter darkened quickly, helped along with the overcast skies and wind. 

Mulder drove back to the cemetery and parked in a ditch near the entrance as there wasn’t a lot. Everyone just walked there from the church for funeral services, or parked in the ditch as they did. 

Glad she thought to pack her big white parka, Scully bundled up before leaving the shelter of the car. Leather gloves with a good grip for gun safety, a scarf not too thick so her head could move freely, an extra layer of socks already failing to keep the cold out. It wasn’t nearly enough.  
Their two flashlight beams barely cut through the fog enough to see ten feet in front of them. They split up, walking through parallel rows of headstones, searching every small valley and hill.

\- - - 

Three hours later, every inch of the graveyard had been trekked through twice. They’d waited for over forty-five minutes in silence, taking in the howling wind. Scully thought it sounded like a woman’s screaming. Mulder still wasn’t convinced. Neither had felt a tap or a tug, neither had seen anything relevant to the missing woman, and both of them were exhausted and chilled through the bone. Every bone.

“M-Mulder.” Even through chattering teeth, Scully managed to convey her rage in a single word. “We’re done. There’s nothing here. Let’s go back to the motel before we freeze to death.” 

She stared at him through the mist of their breaths hovering between them until his shoulders dropped slightly in acquiescence. Scully turned on her heel and led them back toward the three imposing oak trees at the front of the cemetery. 

Halfway there she felt a tapping on her shoulder. 

“Knock it off Mulder.” She didn’t break her stride. She was going to stay mad at him until she was warm again and maybe even then too. 

“Knock what off?”

He tapped her shoulder again. Scully rolled her eyes and upped the pace toward the car, over his teasing. 

“Come on, what did I do?” Mulder insisted. He stopped with the moping slower walk behind her and jogged a second to cut her off. He took her shoulders in his hands and stopped them both, not thirty feet from the car. Where did he get off looking so warm when she was frozen solid? 

Suddenly Scully was pissed. She’d been on edge this whole trip, angry at every comment, hyper aware of her surroundings and how damn cold she was. This teasing from Mulder was meant to be light hearted, his normal self, but her mood persisted.

“Scull-ee, come on. I really thought we’d find something out here. I’m sorry we didn’t.” 

He pouted a little, shivering just enough for her to finally feel some empathy with him, connected a little again. He looked so sincere that she softened her guard just a little, about to reply, but froze instead. Her eyes went wide. 

“Mulder?” she asked in a small voice, instantly alerting him to something being wrong. 

“Scully? What’s—”

“Mulder is there someone standing behind me?” she asked without blinking. 

Mulder slowly shook his head, looking at Scully like she was crazy. 

“Because someone just pulled my hair.” 

Mulder’s eyes matched hers a split second later. “Someone just tapped me on the shoulder.”

Scully nodded slightly.

“Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Ok.” 

Half a beat passed, then both of them turned and briskly walked back to the car with straight backs and clenched jaws.

\- - -

Neither of them spoke a word on the way back to the hotel, nor was communication necessary. Mulder followed Scully into her room, locked the door behind them, and they resumed their positions from scant minutes ago. Standing. Staring. Trying to figure out what the hell just happened. 

Scully was trying desperately to correct her memory. She didn’t really feel her hair tugged. It was just caught on her scarf. It was the wind. She was hallucinating from the cold. Mulder spoke, shaking her out of her trance.

“Scully?”

“Before you ask, don’t bother drafting your report. I will not be including the moment tonight when we, in our states of exhaustion, got spooked in a cemetery and fled the scene.”

Mulder nodded slightly, willing to concede Scully’s revision this once. 

“That’s fair.”

Both let out shaky breaths, somewhat embarrassed to be so affected by a simple ghost story.  
Before they had a chance to relax, Mulder’s cell rang, startling them both. He answered, unable to shake himself back from being so on edge. Scully was vindicated to see his mood match hers for once.

He answered the phone. “Mulder.” 

“Agent Mulder! I’m glad I caught ya. I hope y’all didn’t spend too much time out there in the cemetery, not tonight anyway, sure is cold out there, but I got an update for ya.”

The sheriff went on to long-windedly explain that Cherton’s credit card usage was traced recently to a hotel-casino combination in Oklahoma. Several calls later and her presence, alive and well, was documented by several eyewitnesses. 

She had run away with a guy, just as Scully suspected. 

Mulder told her as much as soon as the sheriff was finished explaining and apologizing. Scully didn’t say a word. She just turned on her heel and stalked to her bathroom. 

Mulder let her go without comment.

\- - -

An hour later they were still frozen from the fruitless search. The shower had refused to expel any hot water. The heaters in either of their rooms couldn’t manage past a sputter of lukewarm air. Scully was too cold to be mad any longer. 

Wordlessly abandoning all plans of not sharing the same room and the same bed for this trip, which to be honest was a plan frequently abandoned by them, Mulder and Scully were huddled together for warmth underneath the flimsy sheets and a probably disgusting comforter only motels had in supply. On top of that were also the flimsy sheets and disgusting comforter from Mulder’s room, yet even after what felt like hours of body heat and shelter, both were still shivering and seeking warmth for their frozen fingers and toes. 

“This is ridiculous,” muttered Scully, scooting backwards, impossibly closer to Mulder. 

Mulder shifted, trying to cover as much of Scully as possible, burrowing his cold nose into her hair. “You know, extended coldness is a residual symptom of contact with apparitions, Scully. It’s just proof. We should be documenting this.”

“It’s not that Mulder,” Scully disagrees by rote, jabbing him slightly with an elbow. “It’s this crappy motel that doesn’t have a working heater, the crappy car that didn’t have a working heater, and you dragging me through a graveyard in the middle of the night in the winter for hours. That is why we’re still hypothermic. Not because of a ghost story.”

Mulder turned Scully in his arms so they were facing each other. 

“That may be,” he started, running his chilly hand up the back of Scully’s sweatshirt, “but I do know of another way we could warm up. A doctor once told me that skin on skin contact works wonders for body heat.”

Before she could reply he drew her closer, covering her mouth with his in a searching kiss. She resisted at first, clutching to her residual anger, but she quickly realized that it wouldn’t warm her, not like Mulder can.

Relenting to his assault, she opened her mouth to allow his tongue entry. Quickly heating up, they pulled apart only for seconds, strategically shucking their pajamas while keeping the sheets around them. 

Mulder was back on Scully in no time, parting her legs with one of his, keeping their bodies flush together for maximum friction, maximum warmth. 

“Warmer yet?” he murmured, skidding his nose along her neck.

“Shut up Mulder,” she breathed back. 

Mulder took that direction well and start kissing up her neck, searching for some of the warmest parts of her just under her ear. The square inch of skin that sent a red-hot chill through her body, making her back arch, forcing that delicious little Scully-sound out of her mouth. 

She responded in kind, following the involuntary arch of her body with a subtle thrust against his long leg resting between her thighs. A slow burn began between then, their cores heating the rest of them at lightning speed. It was a shock to the system, how hot their skin radiated after days of cold.

In one long sweep of his arm, Mulder threw the suddenly stifling sheets elsewhere and moved to cover Scully completely with his body. In their time together, they had made love in desperation, sadness, fear. They had fucked in jealousy, in white-hot passion, in love. But never had they gone so literally from cold to hot, from huddling for warmth to all out fucking, so quickly as they did this night. Part survival. Part indescribable.

Mulder spread Scully’s legs further apart, his hips and knees finding familiar places between hers, his mouth covering hers. Scully clutched at him, hands running through his hair, legs hooking around his form, wanting him closer, closer, please.

A practiced hand guided him into her heat, and finally they both were warm again.  
Scully felt surrounded and whole, her shattered nerves rejoined for the first time since they started the case. Scully shook with pleasure, rising quickly toward her peak. 

The intensity rose between them and their growing warmth turned to flames. She relished the heat rippling from her core, clutching at Mulder as he continued to move and follow her over the edge. Mulder collapsed on her, exhausted, but warm.

Fuck the cold, fuck Missouri, fuck run-away fiancées, fuck haunted cemeteries. This was what really mattered, what made the world real and worth it. A quick hand pulled the sheets back around them, trapping as much warmth as they could. Scully got comfortable under Mulder’s arm and against his chest, hoping that the next day would greet them with sunshine and smooth traveling back home. 

\- - -  
This cemetery is based off of a real one in Cape Girardeau, Missouri! I haven’t been there specifically, but I’ve been to the town before. It’s called Lorimier Cemetery and dates back to the 1800's and is believed to be haunted by the Tapping Ghost. The story surrounding the Tapping Ghost says that visitors have experienced a sensation of something tapping them on the shoulder. The tapping repeats, usually until the visitor gets frightened enough to leave. Visitors have also had their hair tugged by an unseen presence.

**Author's Note:**

> This cemetery is based off of a real one in Cape Girardeau, Missouri! I haven’t been there specifically, but I’ve been to the town before. It’s called Lorimier Cemetery and dates back to the 1800's and is believed to be haunted by the Tapping Ghost. The story surrounding the Tapping Ghost says that visitors have experienced a sensation of something tapping them on the shoulder. The tapping repeats, usually until the visitor gets frightened enough to leave. Visitors have also had their hair tugged by an unseen presence.  
> I am from Springfield, however, so I had to mention that one at least!  
> And thank you to @pickingoutchinapatterns for her help!


End file.
